


a little ache

by 127AM (hotmess_ex_press)



Category: NCT (Band), WAYV
Genre: Light Angst, M/M, Pining, Possibly Unrequited Love, based off of their cover of lovely, no au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:07:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25774096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotmess_ex_press/pseuds/127AM
Summary: the music starts again. ten smiles at him, shaky. sicheng can still feel the phantom press and curve, the feverish silk of ten's lips on his. the unyielding sweetness of it all. "one more time."
Relationships: Dong Si Cheng | WinWin/Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten
Comments: 7
Kudos: 44





	a little ache

"we don't _work_ together," sicheng snaps. he's tired, so fucking tired. the high of dancing, of sweat blurring the corners of the room and fatigue making his muscles loose and overly pliable, has liquefied into poison, slick and bitter cleaving through his veins. and ten is prodding a little deeper into his venom-swollen fangs with every sloppy run-through, every lazy motion and stumbling turn. "we just don't work."

in the harsh light of the practice room, sicheng could count ten's ribs, half exposed, jutting from his delicate frame as they are. easy access to his heart, at least from the outside. it's tearing a space for himself on the inside that's hard for sicheng. the white straps of his top barely cling to ten's shoulders, so deceptively sinewy.

ten, arms crossed, rubs tiny circles into his elbows. "it's a multilayered song," he muses, gaze flicking to the left, then the right, lingering on a spot just beyond sicheng's head. sicheng is grateful for it, the mockery of eye contact. he doesn't think he could handle the glitter and grit of ten's eyes, not alone with him like this, not when he is too far to touch but too close for sicheng to pretend he doesn't want to. "multilayered dance."

"it's not." ten blinks and finally levels his stare to sicheng's. sicheng closes his eyes, feeling petulant. exhaustion prickles in his arms and the center of his forehead. his fists are clenched tightly enough to carve red moons in the flesh of his palms, so he unfurls his fingers one by one as he exhales. _slow_. "it's black and white, ten, _we're_ black and white. life and death."

a hum. sicheng wonders how ten can make him feel so young, so raw and vulnerable, with nothing but a soft, low sound--pulled deep from the rough of his throat, made hazy by his tongue wrapping leisurely around it. that three a.m. daze is like honey pooling beneath ten's tongue, sweetness to drip as he sees fit.

"maybe that's the way _you_ choreographed it, but i don't think so," he whispers. his voice is a gauze-edged knife, rose petals peeling away from the roof of his mouth, ice water trickling down sicheng's spine. "it's about lovers too. the bending, the breaking. the rebuilding. tender when we're together, always a little achy."

sicheng feels more than hears ten stepping closer. his fingers flex.

there's a feathery touch at his cheek, brush of his shirt against ten's bare skin. ten's fingertips glide over his cheekbones, his jawline, barely grazing his bottom lip before settling breathlessly beneath his chin.

sicheng realizes he's bowing into ten's hand, spine curving towards ten's tentative warmth.

ten's eyelashes flutter against his cheek. "because what are life and death," gentle breath at the curve of his neck, ephemeral caress, "if not lovers?"

_lovers_ falling from ten's lips to pierce through sicheng's veins like a drug. he _trembles_. he wants to melt, sink into ten's body through the gaping bruises of shadow between ten's ribs. fill his lungs until they overflow, because if there's no room for sicheng in ten's ever-giving, rose-red heart, then at least let them both drown in this infinite, bloody love sicheng has.

"then show me," he demands. ten pulls away.

he can't hope, but his eyes flutter open anyway.

"turn the lights off, dance with me," he breathes. "love me the way life needs death."

ten's bittersweet smile catches the last of the room's waxy glow as he flicks the lights off. crippling. "of course."

and so they dance. sicheng lets only a fraction, the ugliest corner, of his reverence for ten bleed into his movements, and still the music courses through him sweeter than it ever has. ten is as beautiful as always.

and it's somewhere around _even if it takes one night or a hundred years_ when a lonely tear slips from sicheng's eye to splash, sparkling, to the floor. too perfect in its crystalline sharpness to masquerade as a bead of sweat. ten's fingers dig into him, and he wishes for all the world that the dirty floor of an empty practice room wasn't the only place ten found detached enough to touch him. that a moment plucked out of a choreography written for light and dark wasn't the only excuse for ten to allow his fingertips to linger on sicheng's skin with anything resembling tenderness.

sicheng would grind his vertebrae down, bone against bone, into dust floating among shattered veins if it meant he was small enough, touchable enough, weak enough for ten to _hold_ him.

they dance, and sicheng can't breathe but it isn't from the strain of dancing, it's from the saltwater, swallowed-back desperation, that rises up in his chest.

the last few phrases of the song are straining through the speakers. sicheng feels dizzy as they walk towards each other, world spinning too fast and too hard, but it slows to nothing around ten, and he is underwater.

sicheng reaches out, hand settling on the back of ten's neck. _just like they choreographed it._ ten is warm, so alive beneath sicheng's palm. and, _just like they've practiced_ , he pulls ten in.

close, close, intoxicatingly close. sicheng could stop himself, knows he could, but he's waited too long. he's been too lonely, staying up late imagining the press and curve, the feverish silk of ten's mouth. why shouldn't he give himself this; this single, greedy, fleeting thing? why shouldn't he forget himself for just a moment, just the two of them and the muted buzz of traffic twenty floors down, in this in-between hour, nothing but starlight and shadow stretched to the breaking point between their lips?

sicheng pulls him too close, touches his lips to ten's with all the frailty, the worship of death bleeding into life. all he can hear is the prickle, the stillness of his heart, waiting, breath caught in his lungs--

_welcome home_.

in the stillness, ten closes his eyes. sicheng doesn't, couldn't bear to as he slides his hand up, into ten's hair, kisses him haltingly, timidly. ten's lips part almost imperceptibly, but he doesn't move: doesn't press back, doesn't twist away. just stands, so unyieldingly soft to the touch, his scent cruelly sweet up close like this.

when his hands fist so gentle in the folds of sicheng's sweatshirt, sicheng finally drags himself away from ten's whisper-spun sugar, stumbling back.

his hands fall to his sides, empty again.

ten's chest rises and falls a little deeper than before. and maybe it's the way moonlight snags in his eyes, the only light gleaming sad and hopeful in the dark room. maybe it's the way he shivers, arms moving to hold himself. or maybe it's just the foolish adoration clouding sicheng's vision again, snuffing out all the things it hurts too much to see. but sicheng, for a moment, could swear that he catches his own heartbreak, mirrored in the glisten of ten's gaze.

sicheng's eyes burn with the shame and betrayal of another tear, breaking away to leave its shimmering trail down his cheek.

ten's stare follows it, but he doesn't point it out. "that was a good run." his voice is hushed and slow. he is already turning away, moving to fiddle with the speakers again. as if time had stopped in that moment, and all that is left is the tears on sicheng's cheek, not even a memory.

sicheng's heart is simultaneously swallowed and split down the middle. this is ten, of course, and what he's thinking, he sure doesn't show. the blood is spilling from the tattered slashes in sicheng's chest, drained from his limbs to pool in the back of his throat. if he speaks, it will cascade like a waterfall of silk, another mess for him to clean up later.

the music starts again. ten smiles at him, shaky. "one more time."

less than a minute before they're set to be on stage. sicheng rocks back and forth on his feet.

"remember," ten is grinning, radiant in white. sicheng knows how blinding he will be, at the full mercy of the stage lights. "a little achy. a little in love."

sicheng lets an uneasy half-smile contort the corners of his lips upward, and ten turns back to the curtains, placated. sicheng tracks the movement of his spidery hands as he stretches, long and pretty, the graceful curve of his back revealed as his sweater rides up. maddening. sicheng exhales. _just a little_ , he tells himself, ignoring the way his heart screams, twists in his chest. _just a little_.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed <3


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